Michael Duane after Risinghill: Rise and fall of an educational celebrity

Abstract

In this article an attempt is made to examine the continuing implications of the operation and closure of London’s Risinghill school, a co‐educational comprehensive extant from 1960 to 1965. It is suggested that Risinghill’s controversial headteacher, Michael Duane (1915–1997), was an educational celebrity and folk hero amongst teachers and in British society generally in the late 1960s and 1970s. It is argued that Duane was never able to emerge from the shadow of Leila Berg’s tendentious account of his work at Risinghill and succumbed to his own celebrity ending his career having achieved self‐made martyrdom but very little else.